Sappho

Bowman, L. (2004). The "women's tradition" in Greek poetry. Phoenix 58 (1), 1-27.

Bowman -- a Greek scholar at the University of Victoria in Canada, who has published on issues of women in antiquity -- addresses the question of Sappho as a specifically female poet, and how gender affects her place in the "tradition" of Greek poetry. Bowman approaches the issue from two angles. She asks first whether there was a specific female oral tradition of Greek poetry (in terms of songs sung by women and transmitted from generation to generation), and secondly in terms of a written literary tradition (including not just Sappho but those other female poets whose work survives from ancient Greece in fragmentary form, such as Corinna, Praxilla, and Nossis). Bowman notes that a female oral tradition is historically likely, based on comparable societies, but that no actual evidence exists to attest to it. As...
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